Realistic View of How You Are

     In my English class, we did this social experiment  where we decided what we value most and we evaluated what that means and what that says about us. An angel means that you don't lie at all. A serpent means that you lie and it doesn't matter to you if you lie. It's not going to make you have a guilty conscience. A lion means you like violence and lean toward that as a reaction. A lamb doesn't agree with violent actions.
      I categorized my self as a serpent lion. This sounds really horrible, but I have my reasoning. There is an appropriate time for everything, and I think that's what people generally don't understand. In theory, yes, I would like to be an angel lamb, but I don't think that's very realistic. I know that if someone killed my sister, who is my best friend and is the closest person to me, I would have the serious, gutteral, visceral urge to kill that person. Whether I act on it or not depends on my actual limits. I think that I could kill someone in that situation, but I can never (and should never) know if I actually could. I'm just being realistic with myself in that I know that would be an option for me. That also doesn't mean that I would think myself above the law. I should still be punished for it, but I would still kill for my sister. I would like to never lie, but I know that I do, especially white lies. I also think its alright sometimes to lie in order to protect someone. If we didn't lie, we would never have Santa Clause, and what a sad world that would be.
     It was interesting to see who was in my group. I was surrounded by a bunch of boys. Typical violent boys. But then there was also Jackie Saplicki, and to me that made so much sense that both of us would be in that group. We have very similar values, and this situation I think we have very similar thinking. I know that we would both kill for our sisters, even if we felt guilty after words. That's the thing that would trigger both of us. We would have the same reaction to someone hurting our family because we are so close to our families.
       I think some people weren't very truthful with themselves, either. I think some people categorized themselves in a group of what they wanted to be, or what thought they thought that they could potentially be. I chose to look at what I would do in the most extreme situations and what I am capable of. Generally, I don't think I act like a serpent lion. But I don't think in the most extreme situations that anyone would be an angel lamb. Also, part of the experiment was that we place where we were on the graph, the more violent the higher towards serpent, etc.
                                                                      serpent


                                       lion                                                             lamb

                                                                       angel
I am not all the way to each extreme. I'm not entirely a lying serpent and I'm not entirely a violent lion. I'm somewhere off of the middle point where everything intersects. I would like to be in the middle, but no one is perfect, and no one is exactly in the middle.